Sony has announced the official price and availability for its new XBR 4K Ultra HD LED TVs. The line includes the XBR-55X900A and the XBR-65X900A, which have screen sizes of 55-inches and 65-inches respectively. While some other manufacturers have offered ultra HD television sets at prices ranging all the way up to $20,000 or more, Sony is actually offering “reasonable” prices, at least comparatively.

The 55-inch TV will sell for $4,995 with the 65-inch version going for $6,999. Both TVs will be available for pre-order on April 21, but the final shipping date is unannounced. Along with pricing and launch information for the TVs Sony is also unveiled its 4K Media Player called the FMP-X1. This device will deliver movies and video shorts in 4K resolution for $699. The media player will be available later this summer.

55" XBR-55X900A

The media streamer itself will come bundled with 10 feature-length films and users will be given access to a fee-based distribution service offering a library of titles from Sony Pictures Entertainment and other production studios. The films that are included with the purchase include Bad Teacher, Battle: Los Angeles, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Karate Kid (2010), Salt, Taxi Driver, That's My Boy, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Other Guys and Total Recall (2012).

quote: OMG, the point is if a little chip on the ipad can push 3MP at under 8W, then a graphics card running 70-250 watts can easily push a 4K screen without much problem. 70-250W is what a desktop mid-high end discrete graphics card will use.

There are a GPUs that are already capable of pushing the latest titles on 3X1080p or 2x1600p

The problem is the difference in display size. You can cut a LOT of corners when optimizing for a 10" screen and get away with it.

It looks to be completely faithful to the Windows version. However, they're going to cut a lot of corners to make a game that is about 15GB on Windows fit within 2GB on the iPad. Texture detail, mesh detail, audio compression, all sorts of things. In the video it looks great on the 10" or 8" iPad screen, but if you use AirPlay or HDMI to output to a TV it just won't look the same as the PC version.

The same applies to something like Real Racing HD, looks amazing on the iPad, anti-aliasing, 60fps, higher resolution than most desktop monitors, etc etc. Display it on a 24" or 60" and the compromises made for mobile are clear.

Valve recently got DOTA 2 running on an iPad and they'll probably release it in a year (I think just to spectate games, not to play with). I GUARANTEE that if you blew it up to a desktop monitor or HDTV size, the differences in image quality would be huge.

Mobile devices can crank out amazing visuals at ridiculously high resolutions but they cut as many corners as possible in order to get there, and limited display size is how they do it.

You can't compare the requirements of a desktop GPU with a mobile GPU, no matter what resolution we're talking about.